


Elixir

by Severina



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Community: tv-universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 19:17:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4533990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Come along, come along, step closer!  Here I have the balm, the elixir, the potion that will cure all ills!"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Elixir

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJ's tv_universe community for their Grandiloquent Words challenge. Prompt word: "pangnymagogue" (a medicine used to expel all unhealthy humours from the body).
> 
> * * *

"Come along, come along, step closer! Here I have the balm, the elixir, the potion that will cure all ills!"

Baelfire hesitated at the edge of the square, head cocked at the sound of the boisterous voice. He shuffled his feet in the mud, squeezed the length of gold chain tighter in his fist. Papa had told him to go straight to the apothecary and back, no dawdling along the way. But that voice! Surely a moment or two wouldn't matter.

He stole a quick glance toward the trail that led to the apothecary's cabin and then edged toward the centre of the muddy square, falling into place among the folk who ranged in a ragged half circle around the old man's cart. The broadside of his wagon was painted with the moon and stars in strange configurations, some of them crude renderings of similar drawings that he'd seen in the odd books his Papa had begun to collect. The resemblance made him falter and he began to turn away… but then the man began to speak.

"Sore back? Aching feet? Pounding behind the temples?" the old man called out. The booming voice belittled the stooped back and yellowing beard. He stood in the bed of the wagon, brandishing a small bottle in the curve of his palm. "My Golden Elixir is just what you've been looking for! Guaranteed to cure all manner and means of what ails ya! Blended from rare herbs and spices found deep in the bowels of the Infinite Forest – at great risk to myself I might add – this Golden Elixir is your ticket to a lifetime of trouble-free days and sleep-filled nights!"

"That little bottle?" a woman asked skeptically. "Cure my aching back?"

"Why, a little drop o' this in the morning and another at night, and you'll be right as rain come the following day! My word on it!"

"Does it work on broken limbs?" someone else shouted.

"My lady, even Reul Ghorm couldn't do a better job!"

The crowd murmured appreciatively at that, and Bae was pushed forward as the people around him surged closer to get a better look. He craned his neck to see as well, and the bottle – what little he could make out – looked tiny and innocuous. Not something that looked like it had the power to heal so powerfully as the old man claimed. But when the sunlight fell on the liquid sloshing beneath the corked topper it shone like a beacon, and Bae's heart pounded with possibility. Maybe… perhaps… a medicine made of golden herbs would be just the thing to take away his Papa's darkness. 

"I'll take one!" he hollered before he could think better of it.

The old man swiped a hand through his unkempt beard, eyed him inquisitively before sniffing. "And where's the likes of you coming up with the coin to buy my Elixir?"

"I have it," Bae insisted. A quick jab of his thumbnail into the length of golden chain and he had snipped a miniscule portion of it free, held it up to the old man. "I can pay!" 

"What's that, boy? Pass it up here, my eyes ain't what they used to be, ya know!"

It was on the tip of Baelfire's tongue to ask the old man why he didn't simply use his own elixir to cure his failing eyesight, but the peddler might mistake his curiousity for insolence. So he merely stepped closer, dropped the tiny piece of linked gold into the man's wrinkled palm.

"Hmm." The man studied the snippet of chain for a moment, then squinted at him. "Where'd you get this, boy?"

"My… my father," Baelfire answered quietly.

"What? Speak up for an old man!"

Baelfire opened his mouth to repeat himself; abruptly changed his mind when he noticed that the villagers were already subtly drawing away from him. He saw one withered old crone make the sign of the evil eye behind her cupped palm; another drew a child no more than three into her skirts and hid his face from view. Whether it was his own looks or his father's gold that gave him away, he'd been recognized – even two miles away from his own village, in a lonely little town at the edge of a beaten trail that he'd never visited before in his life. "It doesn't matter," he called back, lifting his chin. This was a chance for something good to come from his father's gold. "Will you take it as payment or not?"

The old man sniffed again, eyes sharp beneath his overgrown brows. "Aye," he said. His fingers closed around the small portion of chain, and when his hand opened again it was as if the gold had never been there in the first place. "I'll take it."

Baelfire had to act quickly when the man tossed the bottle his way, snagging it out of the air an instant before it would have been trampled in the mud. He made his way past the silently watching crowd – who began to jostle nearer to the old man again, he noted, as soon as he was away from their midst – and then held the bottle up to the sunlight. It sparkled and shined, tiny flecks of golden chips bobbing gently here and there in the liquid. Surely something so beautiful and gleaming and full of light could help his Papa!

He remembered the old man's instructions, and nodded to himself as he tucked the tiny bottle beneath his jerkin for safekeeping. He would put a drop or two – perhaps even three – into his Papa's oatmeal at breakfast the next morning, and again into their stew at dinner. And when his Papa rose in the morning two days hence, perhaps the Dark One will have fled. He could have his Papa back again… his _real_ Papa. They could find a new village where no one had ever heard of Rumplestiltskin or Baelfire.

And maybe… just maybe… they could live happily ever after.


End file.
